Gratitude Grows from Humility

I want to begin by telling you a little about how our year of gratitude came about. It was somewhere around the end of October, and Lucinda and Dexter had an idea that they wanted to say thank you to all of the people who give and serve and do so much day in and day out here at Lebanon First UMC by sending them a thanksgiving card saying that we are thankful for them. Now, me being the supportive, kind, compassionate person I am said THERE IS NO WAY WE ARE GOING TO DO THIS! The reason I said this is one because I can be cynical and two, I know there are so many people who do so much, many behind the scenes that I knew we would inevitably leave someone out and inadvertently hurt their feelings.

They wouldn’t let it go. They felt strongly that we needed to say thank you. They came up with a plan. That plan included us becoming focused on being thankful for every single member of Lebanon FUMC and the many ways each person contributes by their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness and say thank you to EVERYONE this Thanksgiving. And everyone should have received a postcard expressing our gratitude for you then. It truly was a meaningful thing for us to send those cards out and we didn’t even fully understand it yet.

Then, we decided we were going to be intentional in 2025 of looking for people who are doing things behind the scenes that we can say thank you to and we are planning to do that. BUT, then it became even bigger. We began discussing and saying things like “why should we stop within the church?” and “what if we were intentional on trying to do this throughout Lebanon?” and “what if our church began being intentional of saying thank you to our community?”

Then I believe God spoke to me in my quiet time and kind of solidified all that we had been talking about. I’ve shared this recently I know, but I now intentionally get up before the rest of my family every morning to sit in silence before I turn the TV on and before I begin scrolling on my phone. I simply seek to still myself and clear my head and work as hard as I can to not let my thoughts wander to what I need to be doing. Some mornings it is more brief. Others, I try to extend it. But one morning in my quiet time when I was trying to be receptive to God, I had a thought come into my mind out of the blue that I believe was God speaking to me and it said - THE BIBLICAL RESPONSE TO ADVERSITY IS GRATITUDE. That is when I really began going down a road that helped me to see the significance of what Lucinda and Dexter wanted us to do.

My whole sermon last week, in case you missed it, was unpacking some of the major adversity we have dealt with in the first half of the 2020s and a call to respond biblically by calling us to a Year of Gratitude. I know it is a new thought to most in our church, but as I have lived with it for over two months, I believe it is necessary and can change the world if we do it right. We are going to start slow with it and learn an understanding of what true gratitude is, then we are going to dip our toes in the water with some experiments, then we are going to see what God does through our faithfulness to him around this. Along this journey, please know if you have a testimony, I want to hear it. I think as we see God change us and others through gratitude then we need to acknowledge and share it.

Today I want to look at a critical aspect of gratitude. In fact, it is what shifts the focus away from us and onto others. We HAVE TO understand that GRATITUDE GROWS FROM HUMILITY. 

Gratitude always involves a posture of humility. If I believe I am owed something, I will not be thankful for it because I think I'm entitled to it. If you just give me a car for no reason at all, I'll be overwhelmed with gratitude. I'll say, "Thank you! I can't believe how good you are to me." If I pay the fair market value for the car, when you hand me the keys, I would say, "That's fine. Okay," but I won't say, "Thank you for this incredible gift. I'm overwhelmed," because I bought it. I'm owed it. The sinful human race is naturally entitled: we believe our gifts rightfully belong to us. The more we think we're entitled to, the less we will be grateful for. We wonder, Why do people who keep getting more and more, show less and less gratitude? The bigger our sense of entitlement, the smaller our sense of gratitude. My sinful mind can convince me I'm entitled to anything I want, and if I don't get something I want, other people must be messing up. They owe me, and they ought to pay me. 

In a Christian framework, ingratitude is not just a psychological problem. It's not just an immaturity problem or even a lack of understanding. It's a sin. Paul says it's the hallmark of a life opposed to God. No parent wants to raise an ungrateful child. Paul talks about people who lived a life opposing to God as being ungrateful. They perceived themselves to be entitled, to be owed. They didn't see themselves as grateful receivers of grace every moment. These people Paul describes are operating out of the assumption that every good gift comes from them and is deserved, that it doesn’t come from God. (Romans 1:21) 

The Bible's word for ingratitude is grumbling. Paul says that grumbling is the quintessential mindset of life without God. Have you ever heard of a church person grumbling? You can be lured away from God by grumbling quicker than almost anything else. God takes this quite seriously. Scripture is clear. Paul heard about a spirit of complaint in the church at Corinth, so he wrote to them about how Israel grumbled at Mount Sinai. God was so good to the Israelites. He gave them freedom, took care of them, gave them the Ten Commandments, led them to the Promised Land...but they just grumbled in response. They were not grateful. Paul says to the church at Corinth, "And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel." How many of you who have grumbled are a little worried right now? The answer is to become grateful. . . And that requires a great deal of humility, as it reminds us that every good gift comes from above, it comes from God. Gratitude is a reminder that it is not all about us. It reminds us that we are here for a greater good, and our very breath is a gift from God. 

In our text for today, you heard what for many of us was a familiar parable - the parable of the sower, sowing seeds that the sower hopes will grow into a harvest that they will one day bring in. I want you to see something in this that I think is key, and it is part of why we entitled this series sowing gratitude. Of course we know that in the parable the sower throughs out seed indiscriminately, knowing some of it will fall on rocky areas or in weeds and thistle but some will fall on fertile soil that will grow and produce abundantly. We know that Jesus later explains the parable and how the seed is the Gospel and at times it will not grow in people’s lives and at times it will get strangled out by the thorns of the world but at times it will grow and produce. Here’s the part I think we miss. When I am planting a garden - I try to till the soil and fertilize the soil and I ONLY PLANT IN PLACES WHERE I THINK IT WILL GET THE RIGHT SUNLIGHT AND WATER. IN OTHER WORDS, I ONLY PLANT IN PLACES THAT I PERCEIVE TO BE FERTILE, BECAUSE AFTER ALL I AM THE EXPERT, RIGHT? 

But that is not what the parable tells us is it? It tells us to sow INDISCRIMINATELY EVEN IN THOSE PLACES WHERE WE MAY NOT THINK IT CAN GROW BECAUSE WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL OF THAT PART OF THE PROCESS. WE ARE ONLY IN CHARGE OF SOWING. And that is humbling. It requires humility to go against what we think is best and where we want to AND TO TRUST GOD. Think about this - we may think our year of gratitude might be best in certain places like schools and hospitals and local businesses and first responders, and of course it might, but what if we sowed gratitude in the jails and the half way houses and the rehab centers and the low income housing? That may feel like rocky or weedy areas, but what if God has been plowing that soil waiting for someone to sow there? 

Gratitude grows from humility, and it requires us to be willing to put aside our egos, realize it’s not about us, and to also realize that we do not know where the fertile ground is and we need to sow indiscriminately. That is how our Year of Gratitude will take hold. 

Thanks be to God 
AMEN